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Here at IVG, our focus over the years has primarily been on the games themselves, and we haven’t ventured much into India’s competitive gaming or e-sports scene. But when there’s talk of an Indian gaming carnival all over social media and promises of Rs 1.5 crore in prize money being made by the organisers, you can’t help but sit up and take notice.

However, the moment we actually started paying attention to what IGC was promising, and the way its organisers – WTF Eventz, went about attempting to achieve it, it seemed clear to us that the organisers were either too naïve to realise that they couldn’t pull it off, or that it was just a scam they were pulling all along. What’s certain, however, is that IGC has been an utter failure, a blot on India’s growing competitive gaming scene, and an embarrassing portrayal of Indian gaming on the world stage. Poor management and substandard equipment were just the tip of the iceberg. Events and entire games were cancelled, electricity supply was inadequate, the entire first day of the event was cancelled, and we’re still not sure if the winners will receive the prize money they were promised. It’s not what you would expect from India’s biggest competitive gaming spectacle.

To anyone who’s been around the gaming industry for a while, IGC seemed fishy from the beginning. The promise of Rs 1.5 crore in prize money without a single sponsor is beyond absurd. Each time the organisers were confronted on their lack of sponsorship, their response was evasive, defensive, and often went off on tangents about how rather than being sceptical, we should all be thankful and supportive of them for putting India on the global e-sports map. Soon, they stopped allowing users to make posts on their Facebook page, and started indiscriminately banning users who raised doubts about IGC’s legitimacy.

These doubts were valid. WTF Eventz has no track record. It was founded only earlier this year and the company wasn’t even worth a tenth of the prize money it was offering. From initially claiming that IGC had sponsors they weren’t willing to reveal, WTF later said that they were funding the event, including the prize money, themselves along with the help of multiple unnamed investors. When asked who these sponsors and investors were, they asked users to visit their offices for this information. It seems bizarre that an event organiser would be so secretive about its sponsors, when the whole point of sponsoring an event is for a brand to get its name out there.

The Game Ministry, Erodov and other websites have investigated the legitimacy of IGC and while their findings weren’t surprising, the incompetence with which the event has been carried out is baffling. For a jist of it, you can check out the 20-odd page IGC thread over at the forums. However, the purpose of this write-up is not to try and expose the scam that is IGC, but to simply bring to light the fact that this event is not a true representation of e-sports in India. From Re-inforcement’s Indian Cyber Gaming Championship to Xtreme Gaming’s BYOC to DSK Supinfocom’s Game Kshetra, there are several e-sports events that are being professionally organised and smoothly executed in India on a regular basis.

It’s important that India’s enthusiastic competitive gamers aren’t simply swayed by promises of big prize money, but instead judge future competitions based on the track records of their organisers as well as the sponsors backing them.

Cash

Posted 09 April 2012 - 04:30 PM

There was one more similar situation in Chennai where the organisation was pure crap. People came from mumbai,bangalore,delhi and 1 guy came from singapore to attend this. In this case few of their computers stopped working and some team had to play with disadvantage of lesser player on top of that they gave only half the price for the winners and told them they would give the rest later on which never happened. One of the team even decided not to take that half prize.

sharat

Posted 09 April 2012 - 04:34 PM

This is really shameful. A big sham, this particular event was riddled with controversies and still dont understand how they managed to lure gamers with fake promises. Right from the companies name to grammatical errors on their profile, they raised more alerts than snake without camo in the midst of a battle. What troubles me is that such.events go unnoticed right under the weary eyes of law...to top it....how can.a.company with no IT record pay 300000 $...and how r the overseas winners supposed to encash it. Great indian rope trick....

CM Sunny

Posted 09 April 2012 - 04:35 PM

I was easily swayed by it as I easily fail to see the ill in any person's action.
Shadow first question their legitibility to which I blindly defended them. However when he gave me some real life examples of gaming scams I started re thinking it.
All the doubts were legit, we just asked them few simple questions to which their response was:

1) We'll reply to your queries later as we are really busy.
2) Call us
3) Come to our office

Then they gave me a date of 6th March, aka the date when they'll reveal the sponser.
On 7th I aslked them to post the names --> No reply
This went on for 4 days & on 11th I noticed they were deleting my comments. When I called them on this they threatened legal action as according to them I was abusing. On my reply they banned me from the page. A friend of mine confronted em on this & they threatened him with legal action(I think I have a screenshot of that)

Anyhoo one doubt led to another, status deleting & banning frequent increased more that Rakhi Sawant's plastics & then this thing finally took place.
Nice scam job they did there

Literally their proof was: Ben whatever & Honey Singh

Also one complain, during March the amount of blind fanboyism & abuses directed over me & other people who doubted them was baffling.
These are the very guys crying now, well boo f**king hoo. Organisers do deserve a thrashing though.

Edited by Thank You Based Sunny, 09 April 2012 - 04:38 PM.

On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.

NitroNeo

Posted 09 April 2012 - 08:56 PM

Really useful this info. , i wasn't going to delhi for this anyway , i'd much prefer city wide tourneys or online tourneys hosted in each city so the people in mumbai can battle the people in delhi & the winner can get the prize at the same location , they can get good internet there along with video conference or something , i would hate going to delhi , no matter how big the prize is

Now WTF are you talking????? , You by any chance a Fan of Sorcerer???, who just like IGC organisers speaks out of his as$ without knowing any sort of truth. Now to clarify, Mukesh was a Moderator on Erodov and was removed even before the expose, when we casually raised doubts to which he responded emotionally saying remove me from Moderatorship and we gladly obliged. Kushagra is not even a member (well he is now, joined for giving some sort of explanation in the IGC scam thread on Erodov).

Big Boss

Posted 10 April 2012 - 10:55 AM

Sam, why was this article not posted when erodov investigation was going on? Or when the event was announced and people were doubting over it?We could have made people aware internationally as well, as spread of IVG is much more than erodov when it comes to gaming.

Some more info:

Ok so since most requested PM's. I thought I'll just post it here anyway. **** MaxAxe and his fake photos and his fake smile and his fake ****ing hair. I tried to help a number of times but ofcourse he was too busy taking "gaming forward".

I didn't know I would be so disappointed. It was amazing the lengths that these organisers went to **** everything up. I had written a summary in our [[1] http://www.facebook....India](facebook group) about what happened but I thought people should know here as well the story behind the incompetent, arrogant assholes that ran this.

I was heading the SC2 and BF3 communities. Not a single thing was done for three days. They DIDN'T have electricity or the internet at their place. This organiser (Retarded mfer.) and his loonies comes up and says we are cancelling this, then organising, then cancelling. **** you IGC. If you had to reduce money you should do it. We went and ran a tournament completely out of a friends place. 14 pc's linked with the internet and ran the WHOLE SC2 and BF3 Tournament without his help.

Now what I put down as the story is what I heard. I don't know how much is true and how much is not, but this seems the popular opinion.Head organiser and his loonies got 1.5 crores (Indian money) of money into the event. But apparently some gaming organisation wasn't given the contract and went and informed the Tax inspectors. They came promptly and seized WTF event's assets. Thus there was no money. How could they save face? Getting in the shittiest tables (dusty, broken chairs). Those chairs were like someone raped them. You couldn't sit on them and we ended up taking IGC's posters to use as table cloth.

On realising this, they could have cancelled it but instead they ran an elaborate scheme trying to get in a local singer to provide some credibility.Anyway back to the event venue.

We waited set up the internet (on our own), got in our OWN PC's because well **** you can't play SC2 or Battlefield without the net. All we asked them was for electricity. No one wanted the money at that point towards the third day. What did they do? Ask us to leave the venue and organise it on our own. At that point we decided to break ties. go to our friends place and organise thewhole thing. They got a hold of some networking guy who sat throughout the night to network the DOTA PC's. Oh they got in PCs. Half didn't have motherboards, the other half didn't have graphics cards. I went to the organiser to give help but he kept saying "my brain is fried, i have been ****ed over by the gamers i can't listen to you or your problems". It was good that I was mature enough to hold my anger. Otherwise the beating up would have happened much earlier.One of the loonies apparently got beaten up by people in the crowd and was hopitalised (or so they say).I'll give him some credit though, he answered phone calls and he was there to show his face. And that hairstyle. Slick. He fights with me there over his honour and how he is, wait for it, "shocked and disgraced that he is being insulted so by being questioned about the money".

Yea sure. He brought shame to this country. We had ONE day to organise a tournament that Thailand and HongKong's best players came over to us for. He had 4 months what the **** did you do besides lie and cheat? If he wasn't a liar or a cheater then how about not teaming up with kids who have no idea of gaming (which you don't too btw) but have money to throw so you save your own reputation. Doesn't seem very smart to tie up with people who don't know sh*t (or are full of it).

We came, we saw and we got conquered.

You know what I can do with 1.5 crores? Run a ****ing amazing event. That's what. Just like the awesome guys did with Lonestar.7 games were cancelled but HEY we had Fruit Ninja in the house. And a winner and LETS POST A PIC. **** you WTFEVENTZ. They had 1100 people visiting. 800 of them were school kids offered free admission to the place to come and see. Perfectly timed with the news media to hold the event.How do you invite a team delay the finals so that you hope they run away. You think Moscow 5 are retards? Do you know who you are dealing with. Every gamer there stood together. The indians were ashamed that they had to host nations and talent from abroad in this fashion. I am ashamed as a gamer to have participated at this event.

But you know what? Indian esports needs to grow. We aren't ashamed Indians. We are ashamed that we let the retarded crop of ours expose themselves. The bad eggs go down the drain next time. A certification is required. Gamers will stand in solidarity.For SC2 we had Redarchon playing against all of us and it was amazing. We had pictures too (i'll upload that and videos shortly).We had CS and Dota running live. A few console games were held too. All the prize money handed out in the form of cheques bounced back (this is a criminal offence in India btw).

I am really sad and tired (I haven't slept in 3 days) that our friends from abroad had to experience this. We made some great friends from Thailand, Hongkong, Russia and Singapore. I am sorry they had to suffer and on behalf of the real gamers and friends I think an apology is due (Even though we weren't paid one penny to do this, we did it for free with our own money).

puns

Posted 10 April 2012 - 04:46 PM

this sort of mismanagement and bad event management happens in all industries in India ( probably the first time in the gaming industry of this scale ) and its a business to scam and disorganize events and make a lot of money because of the typical problem of weak law and order and judicial system.

International teams, Indians who have made losses in this event can sue the company and involved parties and take the legal route but we all know how bad that ends up to be so no one does that.

Anyone today can open a company with any name, hold a shoddy event and run away because they know they can get away.

We in India don't know how to hold large events and the business and effort that goes into holding an event and here you have a bunch of 20 year olds thinking they will hold India's biggest gaming festival. just go on websites of international gaming festivals and see the scale and magnitude of the events and more so, the effort in doing these events.

NH7 weekender in pune , their music festival was done by an Indian company in collaboration with 2 international companies to make it so successful.

grow step by step and not jump on the moon on the first go, do what you introspectively think is possible.

At the end of the day, its business and if you dont know that business, get experts and then do it and not test the waters at the expense of people.
Its a shame for the country and people when such a thing happens but it happens regularly, you all will be surprised to the extent of such bad events happening in India.

LaughingMan777

Posted 10 April 2012 - 11:08 PM

so... they hold a 1.5cr scam. get ppl to come in from all over the country. invite international teams, and then rob them before they leave the country. post pics of getting beaten up themselves.

monetary scale notwithstanding, the proportion of this scam in terms of how it took place in front of the public is epic. massive balls to have thought this up.
u could make a f**king GTA videogame out of this story itself. Grand Theft Gamer.

HundredProofSam

Posted 11 April 2012 - 12:06 PM

Sam, why was this article not posted when erodov investigation was going on? Or when the event was announced and people were doubting over it?We could have made people aware internationally as well, as spread of IVG is much more than erodov when it comes to gaming.

As I said at the start of the article, we tend to focus more on the games themselves and we aren't very involved in the competitive scene. But it looks like the Indian sites that do focus on competitive game too weren't smart enough to realise that this event was never gonna happen. Sites like Game Orbit and The Game Ministry were going all ga-ga over it in the lead-up and only saw the reality of it 4 days before the event. I remember Milo telling me about this event a couple of months ago. It took literally 2 mins to figure out that this event was never going to happen.

@HPS: I wonder why you or the IVG staff havent come up with an event to bring gamers together. Im sure you wouldve done a much better job than these retards!

Irredeemable

Posted 11 April 2012 - 12:20 PM

As I said at the start of the article, we tend to focus more on the games themselves and we aren't very involved in the competitive scene. But it looks like the Indian sites that do focus on competitive game too weren't smart enough to realise that this event was never gonna happen. Sites like Game Orbit and The Game Ministry were going all ga-ga over it in the lead-up and only saw the reality of it 4 days before the event. I remember Milo telling me about this event a couple of months ago. It took literally 2 mins to figure out that this event was never going to happen.

We may just do that.

Ill be here if you need help doing this thing. Not for money or for fame, but for being a part of something genuine and contributing to the gaming scene.

HundredProofSam

Posted 11 April 2012 - 12:24 PM

Not for money or for fame, but for being a part of something genuine and contributing to the gaming scene.

That's the exact same reason we'll be doing it.

Getting sponsorship and funding shouldn't be a problem, but we'll need all the help we can get in organising it. So anyone with experience in organising gaming tournaments (on whatever scale) please PM me.

Irredeemable

Posted 11 April 2012 - 01:47 PM

Getting sponsorship and funding shouldn't be a problem, but we'll need all the help we can get in organising it. So anyone with experience in organising gaming tournaments (on whatever scale) please PM me.